These are not universal truths...

well you can’t ‘blame’ the cosmos because the cosmos isn’t an intentional director or determiner of events. you can, however, allocate various causes to specific features about the cosmos, but none of this can be understood in the anthropomorphic terms we use in our language.

the difficult part is extracting out of the language about causation, the anthropomorphic concepts we’ve imported into it after centuries of developing and practicing the conceptual confusions produced by the theory of freewill that we employ in our practical discourse. words like ‘blame’, ‘fault’, ‘responsibility’, are packed with connotations that are erroneously applied to an indifferent causality. and if you aren’t careful, you’ll start to not only ‘blame’ the cosmos like you would a neighbor who broke your gas grill when he borrowed it, but also call the cosmos ‘unfair’ as well, like the neighbor who refuses to fix the grill.

it’s the confusions inherent to the illest-freewillist’s language that leads him to be only able to understand the determinist’s ideas about causality in the same way he understands the moral language he uses to describe the behaviors of people.

if and when you come to understand that belief in causality, and lack of belief in an immaterial, cartesian model that defines the self as a causal agency, are results of reason alone and not some ill-advised emotional attempt to avoid culpability, will it begin to make sense to you. until then, you will only be able to understand the determinist as someone who attributes to the cosmos those erroneous terms you attribute to what you perceive is the free agent. ergo; when a determinist denies freewill, he must be trying to dodge responsibility. he couldn’t possibly deny freewill only because it makes no sense.

now as obvious as this is, the freewillist can’t afford to admit it. he will by any means necessary hold on to his argument to avoid facing his own confusion.

aegean,

I don’t have a personality disorder.

Prom,

You really knew that you could disprove gods by analyzing that if anyones consent is being violated, that it’s a false god, but NEVER SAID IT?

WOW you’re a jerk!!

Here’s the deal. Yes, I hear voices. The voices tell me what’s going to happen in the future, and they’re never wrong. They wanted me to know that they’re real, and they proved their point. I actually try using all my spiritual power to change timelines so that they’re wrong. Time will tell. What’s a joke about labeling people as schizophrenic is the question “Do you hear or see things nobody else hears or sees?” Of course not! At a minimum, the entities involved see and hear it too. Often times, I’m called into “spiritual conference calls”, I"m a highly sought after soul for these cosmic discussions. Like I’ve stated before… I’m like the grand central station of the spirit world. My council is sought after and included for very big discussions about existence.

Yes, it is an absolute miracle that I come across as a normal person. In my life, I’m actually seen as simply charismatic … normal. Because the web allows for in depth conversations, you all get a peek into my truer self (not that I don’t have people I discuss these things with in life outside the net) People just usually don’t bother to get to know me that well. Which is fine by me.

You are so wrong, only I can truly appreciate it.

how cruel determinism is. It makes me right, and you wrong…repeatedly. you can’t even do anything about it…if ti hasn’t been determined.
We are made in god’s image.
We may try to stretch our will, but at the loss of paradise…Utopia.
Shall we not, like meek slaves, stoically endure our fate? Who are we to blame?
God for making us so? Shall we cry out against the heavens?
Are we not accusing ourselves for being ourselves? The only way it could have ever been.

Let us be content that eternal recurrence will ensure our eternal repetition of our dutiful surrender to the almighty primordial one, as the holy prophet reminded us.

No, of course not. You are as normal and rational as anyone on this forum. I can say that with some degree of certainty.

What you guys don’t realize is that you’re not only sycophants to this existence, you’re quitters.

but have you ever not decided to get out of bed because you have no freewill? can there even be such a thing as a fatalist? if he lies in bed for hours arguing with himself about his inability to do anything of his own freewill, the final verdict will be in the form of his decision to do one or the other; get up or lay there. now it doesn’t matter that whatever he does, he didn’t do so in an act of freewill. whether or not he has freewill does not detract from his illusory experience of it in the form of having to decide.

“Quitters”?!!
How dare you, sir!
I would have you know that after a lifetime of bad judgment calls that almost entirely destroyed my life, I came here seeking aid, and found it.
I will not embarras them by naming them, but this individual inspired me with his negative cynicism, and I learned the power of the nil. It produces so much joy in me.
It’s so easy and multifunctional.
Negate, dismiss…laugh…make clever remark, mock, deny, nullify, laugh some more.
The nil is god. Fuck oneness and absolute wholes. this is absolute void of all substance and meaning…and reason. Nothing can break through this defence.
I’ve made practicing psychologists with diplomas give-up…but not I. No, no. I never give up, now that I found how powerful the nil truly is.

Use the un-force, Ecmandu.

I did decide to not, not, get out of bed.

Of course, master.
Your teachings have touched me deeply.
How can there be fate, when all is determined.
In the old countries they say ‘all is written’. Fate is just a word meaning…determined.
Moire. The fates.

God’s will…another way of saying universal absolute order - Will to Power…god’s power.
You aren’t a member of the herd…the herd is a manifestation of you.

Someone showed you the EASY path and you took it. I’m on record many times on this board as stating that the wicked enjoy their lives more than the good. You see, the wicked LOVE zero sum wins… the good have to regret ALL of their zero sum wins (because they care).

You think you understand me… I understand you much more.

As you continue to engage with me, the truth will keep persistently knock at your door… the noise will eventually get so loud that you’ll have no choice but to succumb to it… you will open that door.

Yes…not my fault. It was written in the stars.

Profound words…never heard that one before. You must be a great sage.
A messiah?
Another one?
How may genius, messiah’s does this forum have? There’s only so much saving the world can endure.

Over my head…but yes.

Obviously. You see me.

No, that was the pizza delivery I ordered.
Sorry…the ringing in your mind was on my end.

Zero sum means that in order for there to be a winner, there must be a loser. Now you know what it means.

wait so you’re one of those guys who think causality implies a causa sui? holy aquinas, man. no wonder you’re having so much trouble. i always thought the ‘uncaused cause ex nihilo’ nonsense was common sense even to first year philosophy students. well then i take it back. i thought you already knew this stuff… what with all the cool looking greek words and stuff. you sure had me fooled.

oh and check this out too. another neat philosophical concept. you can have ‘universal absolute order’ even without god. cool, right? yeah all you need is a space full of material that interacts with itself… and wah-lah, you have an absolute order.

and it gets even cooler. you don’t need to observe and recognize consistent and/or recurring patterns to deduce the presence of absolute order. absolute order is a necessary consequence of the existence of material in space/time.

you can’t think of ‘order’ as only an expression of symmetry, what you happen to be able to identify with your senses.

the bad news is, the knowledge of absolute order won’t help you sleep at night. it’s more or less a useless truism. one of those ‘it just is’ things. but sure, you can tell yourself that this is ‘god’s will’ if it’ll help you make sense of the universe and provide for you some meaning and purpose.

i dunno about all that, but there certainly are herds out there. any group with more than four members is dangerously close to becoming a herd. next thing you know they got their own set of spooks they believe in; culture, nation, state, moral codes, and everything else. then they start reproducing. it always happens.

here’s a thought experiment that might help you. with the concept of ‘absolute order’, i mean.

say you’re a big ass creature bigger than the whole universe, and you’re standing outside of it with a camera. you take a series of pictures at rapid speed. later when you look at each picture, you see that every bit of the material in that universe was in a specific place. that organization of material is its ‘order’, and that order is absolute. meaning, that bit of material wasn’t kinda where it was. it was totally where it was. like REALLY where it was. no foolin around.

and then you reflect on… i dunno, something heraclitus said. wasn’t he the one with the river or whatever? and now you’re perplexed. you scratch your head; wait a minute… if time is a continuum and there is nothing but flux, how the fuck did i get those pictures?

at this point you find it reasonable to shrink down to the size of a human, go to earth, put a beige toga on and pace back and forth underneath some architectural ruins in greece that have become tourist attractions, and ponder this profound question further.

after some time you arrive at this conclusion; while time is a continuum, and there is only the flux, each moment is preceded and superseded by another moment in which there was, or will be, a definite order. and then you realize that you had it all wrong before. that ‘flux’ and ‘chaos’ and ‘asymmetry’ were all part of a larger order which is absolute, in that at any moment in space/time, things cannot not be what and where they are. it was just the changing from one order, one arrangement, to another, that turned you into a bamboozled genius. you were like ‘these pictures gotta be an illusion’, but now you’re like ‘ohhhhhhh. i see now,’ at which point you find it quite reasonable to leap into the air underneath one of those ionic columns and shout ‘eureka’!

and it just so happens that at that precise moment, a tourist takes a snapshot of you while you’re suspended in mid air (perhaps clicking your heels together, while you’re at it), your toga wafting in the cool breeze of the greek summer. upon looking at the picture the tourist says ‘stranger things have happened, i guess.’

Sounds like what Commandant Biggs has been saying for 58 pages in the ‘Determinism’ thread.

Some things have to he said 58 times before they stick. It’s a dirty job. That’s what we got special agent Biggs for. We send him in, wait, and then pick him up at the extraction point.

Except that it’s not anything worth repeating.

Things are the way they are.

So what?

Agents made it this way. And they make the future.

That’s something more interesting and useful to investigate. The how and the why.

Okay, let’s explore this in relation to the gun control debate. What is or is not worth repeating in the conflicting arguments from both sides? From all sides really.

Also, pertaining to the manufacture, sale and use of firearms, are things just “the way they are” because we live in a wholly determined universe? Or, instead, if we have some capacity to choose freely, are the tools of philosophy able to resolve the arguments embedded in the conflicting goods here? Or, instead, is my own suggestion that individual value judgments are the embodiment of “I” embedded existentially in the points I raise here…

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

…more applicable?

How does your understanding of “agents” fit into all of this? How do they function given, say, a discussion of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? And why do they function this way and not another?

No Kids please!!!

Your cat has diarrhea.

Saying that “the cat could not not have diarrhea” doesn’t help the cat or you.

Saying that it was determined at the Big Band that the cat would have diarrhea now is …

Honestly I don’t know what to call it.

Doing something for the cat and yourself requires that you investigate an isolated set of actions and circumstances.

You can do that. People do it all the time.

And yeah, it’s also applicable to “gun control”.

I said no Kids.

Seriously, though, this “crap” comes pretty damn close to what I have come to expect from them. I’ll just chalk it up to a shitty mood, okay?

So, sure, when you snap out of it please address my points as more befitting an actual exchange of philosophy on a philosophy board in a philosophy discussion forum.

You don’t know how to solve problems but you want to discuss solving big problems like abortion and gun control.

Try some baby steps.